How To Publish 100 Podcast Episodes (10 Lessons I Wish I Knew on Day 1)

On President's Day, February 19, 2024, I walked into my primary care's office to get a checkup. It was just a routine checkup. Around the same time, I had also been feeling some slight discomfort in my rib area right underneath my heart. And so I figured, since I'm already there, why not just ask them about that as well? So I did, and the doctor recommended that I get an ECG done or an ECG, depending on where you're from. The technician came in, stopped me up, and she then looked at the results of the ECG that was printed out on a piece of paper. Then she looked at me, and then she looked at it again. And then she said that we're going to run this one more time, which I was beginning to tell that something might be up, but I let her do that. This time,

she ran it, and then went straight back out, came back in with the doctor that I was seeing. And the doctor said there's something wrong with my heart. I might be close to the D-word, to stopping to exist. And she made me sign this little acknowledgement thingy that said that I understand the risks. And she asked me, "Do you want me to call you an ambulance?" At which point, I was like, "No, I think I'll just Uber." So I ended up Ubering to an ER near me. It was a 10 minute ride. It was daytime here in the US. So the only person I could call was my brother, who lived here. My parents and my entire family was in India a seep at the time. I didn't feel the need to wake them up for some reason. And I spent the entire day in the ER, pretty much convinced that I was probably going to... which in retrospect doesn't make a lot of sense. But

when you're in a situation like that, it is all that you can think about. This is the hospital band that they gave me that I did want to show you guys from the hospital. I remember recording videos for my parents saying my goodbyes. And the most weird of all, I remember that entire day between labs and tests and just all of the madness going on around me. It was very much like an episode out of the pit if you've seen that. But the whole thing that... the only thing I could think about throughout the day was regret about never doing a bunch of things that I would have to die without doing. And on the top of that list was having a YouTube channel. It turned out to be a completely known type of arrhythmia of the heart, which is, as it turns out, actually pretty

normal. So it's a known exception if that makes sense. So funnily enough, Dr. Randy, who was the cardiologist on call that day, he actually said that he had the same exact condition that I did. So it turned out to be a nothing burger long story short, which probably went longer than I wanted it to. But that brings us to why I started this channel and why I uploaded the first episode of the "Ready Said Do" podcast on April 4th, 2024, exactly two years ago from the day of recording, and eventually, hopefully, uploading this. I wanted to share with you 10 lessons that I've learned after 100 episodes that I wish I knew when I first started. We'll take just one more minute to set the context around the theme of my show and what it exists for. And it's very simple. The theme is

that the only way to learn is to do, and life is lived in the arena. What I mean by that is when you listen to podcasts with PhDs and like the Elon Musk's of the world, they're talking about inspiration. It's very good for that. But when it comes to actually doing the thing, it's like somebody's trying to sell you their used lottery ticket. It already worked for them. It's not going to work for you or for anyone else. So the only way to learn, according to me, is by figuring out, by talking to a person that did that thing, probably got two, three steps ahead of you, maybe two steps ahead of you, and knows just about enough to tell you what they did without spoon feeding to you, that here's what you must do. Because ultimately, we have to form our own paths.

All of advice boils down to just canceling out to zero if you combine all of the world's advice. So the most important skill then boils down to becoming what advice do you reject versus what you accept? Because advice is exactly that. It's a line in the sand. It's all about knowing what to do when that makes advice. So instead of over optimizing for advice, the goal of this show is to just encourage you to take action at whatever the thing is that you're trying to do.

Take the first few steps, you'll probably fail and you will probably find yourself in uncharted territory. This is normal. This is expected. This is where we want to be. So having said that, I've had 100 episodes. This is the 100th one. I've spanned spectrum of guests. We beat episodes with a Chicago-based DJ that taught herself how to DJ with data scientists, with business analysts, with a guru based out of India with an eight-year-old, with an artist. Really, the plan here is that once you distill the common narrative from all of these 99 episodes, it turns out that the secret here is surprisingly simple. It is to simply be high agency. It is that deadly combination of being disagreeable, having clear thinking abilities, and having a bias to action that separates

the doers from the thinkers. Having said all that with having said all that context, we will now be jumping into the 10 things that I've learned. And here they are. First, your guest's family will promote your show harder than you ever can. This is probably simple in a sense. Maybe I don't need to elaborate on this too much, but I was just completely not ready for how much promotion your guest's family, friends, well-wishers, you know, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever you have will do without you having to lift a single finger. The most wholesome part about this is always the parents. It's just that single comment by somebody's mom on a video that otherwise got 300 views. Well, there's just something so incredibly powerful about enabling that. And to an extent, it's actually even more powerful than

some of the dopamine hits that I get from my best performing videos. This is not something I was prepared for every single time, every single week with every single episode. It is a complete joy to watch those comments pour in. Those posts go out on LinkedIn, people commenting on Instagram Reels and such about, "Hey, that's my brother." Or, "Hey, Chiku." Or, "Hey, Gulu." Or whatever, you know, it's awesome. It just brings me so much joy when that happens. Next up, pedigree outperforms perceived quality on the recommendation shelf every single time. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way. And maybe there will be some naysayers on this, but this has been purely my experience.

I completely welcome any and all challenges to this. But what I found again and again was that when I led with the authority of a person, here's this person's credentials. Here's what sets them up to say these things that they're saying. And then open into the episode beat on the title, beat the way I packaged it, beat on the trailer. Those episodes almost always outperformed. Other episodes with guests that did not really have any name brand quote unquote credentials to their name. But according to me, that objectively had shared more sharper insights, better ideas, just better content overall than the pedigree people. Unfortunately, this is just the way the game works. I think, again, I am by no means an expert at any of this.

Maybe I should have led with this first, but given the fact that you're here already, I hope that that at least in essence helps you understand where I'm coming from. But now the challenge then becomes that personally, right? I don't think that I only want to be doing episodes with people with credentials that is not a meaningful way for me to do this work. So then it becomes a balancing act. So maybe in a month, you do three episodes that your name, brand credentialed pedigree people. And maybe you use your fourth chance to continue to experiment, bring in somebody new, bring in somebody that's off the beaten track that does not have any name brand associations, but that has actually really helpful things to say.

And again, not to be a doomsday, but every once in a while, I've had those episodes perform really well as well that has happened. It's just rare. Number three, for my YouTube podcasters, a great thumbnail can actually hurt your show if it doesn't look like a podcast. It's a simple idea. When you package something really well, again, I'm not even talking about clickbait, right? Because you never want to clickbait, make sure that you always pay off the promise that you make in your title and thumbnail. Because if you don't for a long enough time, it is going to hurt your channel. That is not what I'm talking about. The what I'm talking about is even though you packaged it really well, again, you used some of your spike here, insights, you evoked an emotion,

you get people to click. The problem now becomes that when they clicked, they didn't really buy into the idea that they want to listen to an actual podcast. So then they click out after 10 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever. And that's a problem. Because what that means is that that thanks to average view duration on YouTube, which makes the algorithm not show it to more people. I learned this way too late. And so now it again, like most things, and maybe this is a common theme throughout this episode, but then it becomes a balancing act in terms of how do you balance your packaging to be clickable? Because of course you want that, but not so clickable that it kind of bypasses the fact or skirts around the fact that it is ultimately a podcast. And you might

be wondering that, Hey, wait a minute, it says 55 minutes right there. I know, right? I agree. You have a good point. But that is not how I have found it works. So I started with pretty pure podcasty packaging and I kept cranking the lever until I reached to basically full blown YouTube thumbnail, right? Like still not Mr Beast territory, but close ish. And then it just continued to backfire. So then I tuned it back down and landed somewhere in the middle. And that's where I'm at currently. And that has still been working decently ish for me so far.

So that is a lesson that I wish I knew when I first started fourth, never ever ever compromise on audio. This one's a bit of a dirt. It is a podcast. It's called a podcast for a reason. And I get it. You're doing video. I get it. That's all the rage you want to be doing video. All of that is fine. But if you will invest in one thing, when you start your podcast, it has to be a mic. There is just no doubt in my mind about how much the perceived quality of your show depends on just this one metric. So for the longest time I used this other mic, which was just not as good.

I actually did not even learn until around episode 80 that you're supposed to be at a distance. So about, you know, that distance from between your mouse and your mic. Shout out to Victor for teaching me that he was one of the guests on my show. A related trick to this is that if you use Adobe's podcast enhanced tool, it's free. It lets you clean up to 60 minutes of audio every day. And it just makes it completely studio grade. It's incredible. Like I'm just always blown away.

I use it week in week out. The difference is night and day, especially if you have not the greatest surroundings in your slither studio, which I don't even have a studio, which we might get to that later. But yeah, so check those things out. And again, do not negotiate on audio quality, no matter what number five, a simple theme can still be very hard to package if you lower your guest status. What do I mean by that? When I first started my show, the way I packaged it was that this is a show that focuses on the journeys of not experts. Now in my naive little head, what I was thinking of doing here was obviously a way to set myself aside, where I'm explicitly going to talk to not experts, which as you might think, that makes sense. Sure, like, you know,

that's a bit of a wedge that I've got here for myself. Problem with that is people do not want to be associated with the word not expert. It just implicitly lowers their status. Anshuman Kumar, who was a guest on my show from MATIC robots, he's the head of product over at MATIC robots, gave me and I'm so grateful for this, but he told me that just pretty much, you know, just straight up without even me having to fish for it. And it's interesting because you might even quiz these people and they would be like, yeah, you're right, I'm not an expert at this.

And you know, it's all fine. The problem is when you as a host introduce somebody as a not expert, that's already weird that again, you come back into status lowering territory and remember that especially when you're dealing with guests, it's okay if you don't touch their status, right? If it is where it was before you first started, that's totally fine. If it increases, that's great. If it decreases, that's a problem. Do not indulge in any sort of packaging or activities that reduce the status of your guests. And again, some of you might be smoking being like, what a dummy. You don't need to put out 100 episodes to learn that. And you would be like, you would not. And yet here I am and yet here we are. And I'm hoping that there's at least somebody

out there that this might benefit related slightly tangential, but related to the same note is the idea of having guests share the episodes. I found that way more guests were willing to share the episode actively once I dropped or once I stopped doing this. Now, this does not mean that you have to change your theme altogether. I certainly did not change mine. It's just all about the packaging, right? So instead of calling them out as not experts, I started referring to the idea of the show or the core theme behind the show that I focus on the first few steps, along with my guests, right? So my guest can be an expert, not expert. Whoever they are, it kind of doesn't even matter because we're still talking about the same things. I'm still true to my mission. Nothing really changed other than the packaging that instead of reducing their

status. Now, you can say elevated them, but at worst kept it at the same level, which is, you know, that's totally fine. Number six, episode seven got 34 lessons. And that is the one where I found my voice. The ROI math on a podcast just just makes no sense. Like people ask me all the time, hey, I'm trying to start a podcast. I'm trying to monetize. I'm trying to make my way or wade into the pond of creator ship. And I just tell them don't do that. Just straight up do not do that.

I still believe that starting a podcast is actually playing the content game at the highest difficulty. There is there are very few ways to do this in a way that it's just it's not easy at all. So I mean, there's just other ways to do that. If your goal is to get subscribers, if your goal is to get money or whatever your goal is, a podcast is the final boss of content creator ship journeys. And I'm not just saying that because I have a podcast. I also just do YouTube separately. I write content elsewhere. I do Instagram. So I feel like I have at least some authority to be saying this. By and large, the hardest content work I've done is my podcast.

Nothing even comes close. The idea is simple. You're asking for the audience to listen to two people that they don't know that well, that are talking about an idea that they might be semi interested in. And you're asking them for 50 ish or whatever 30, 40 minutes of their time. If you're like most people, you probably do not have Elon Musk as your first guest. And so what that means is you are going to have a lot of reps that nobody will watch. And that's a good thing.

It's a feature. It's not a bug. It's usually episodes that nobody listens to where you learn how to go off the script, how to actually have an engaging conversation, how to make a guest feel at ease when they were otherwise struggling to really just open up in many ways. And all of those reps are gotten in with these episodes that nobody ultimately listens to. So the goal that almost becomes to stop chasing virality and start focusing on your process, right? Because irrespective of whether your video is a hit or a failure, you have to go again. You repeat your cycle every single week. We can week out in victory and in defeat. The only thing you can focus on is getting one person better at just everything, one person better at editing, one person better

at asking questions, one person better at making your guest feel comfortable, one person better at distribution. You get it. It never ends. It's literally a process that's designed to be infinite. Infinite. However, you say number seven, you need to get good at solo episodes. And this right here is an example that I haven't yet. Out of 100 episodes, I have two solo casts that ratio is straight up embarrassing. I don't need you to tell me that sitting alone with a microphone looking at a camera and talking into it is just a completely different skill set compared to having a conversation with a guest. And I've just been actively avoiding it. I did talk about this in this how to podcast seminar I did about a year ago. And a lot of people were surprised by that. A lot of people said that it

would actually be easier for them to do a solo cast compared to a guest podcast. So maybe the audience here spans the spectrum in terms of what you feel about it. Personally, it terrifies me. It's way harder. Like it's not even a comparison in my book. So what I would recommend for anyone is to just do it by designing a better system. So for every nine guest episodes you do, force yourself to do one solo cast. That is my plan going forward. So you will be saying way more of these. And if this is something you enjoy, please do consider following or subscribing because this stuff is hard. Number eight, and this will be true for just even normal YouTubers, but 95% of your watch time will come from non-subscribers. What that means is your show lives and

dies on discovery. This one really just reframes everything that you have going on like literally because it's the first 30 seconds that will determine what your episode ends up doing and in terms of performance. Of course, along with the thumbnails and titles and the way you package it. Remember, almost nobody watching you has chosen to follow you. You were just able to get them because you promised them to talk about a thing that they care about, be it educational or entertaining.

Sometimes they will even stumble in through a recommendation or just like a fleeting LinkedIn post that you made or something. What this means is that every single episode then becomes an audition. You have to put content out with the notion in mind that your audience can land on any one of your X number of episodes. And it still has to represent what your show stands for, what your theme is, who you are as a person, why you're doing this. And it's almost like a slice of the cake that needs to be consistent throughout because you can't have it be like chocolate on this 30 degree sector. And then on the opposite side, it's like strawberry mixed with caramel or something that you don't want that because that is not your show. I hope if that is something

that worries you, it's a simple fix. You just go back to the drawing board and really make sure you figure out what it is your theme is. I think there is a lot of value in doing this. And the reason for this is just as simple as it serves as your north star, right? Like if you're ever in doubt, this clarity is what will help you make the decision. And if you don't have this clarity, the problem with that is you will just find yourself floundering a lot in terms of not having direction for these decisions that you have to take, which used to happen for me a lot. Now it happens much lesser because it's super clear in my head why I exist or why my show exists and the specific problem that it solves. Number nine for my genre agnostic buddies out there. This is your superpower

and your curves talking to a DJ one week and a spiritual guru the other week and a data scientist the third week. This is what makes the show feel alive. This is what makes me put cool things on the website, but it also means that the algorithm never knows quite what to do with you. And I don't mean to make this into like an algorithm bashing thing because it's totally my fault. This has nothing to do with the algorithm being at fault. The simple fact of the matter is when somebody clicks your stuff, let's say they like it. Let's say you passed the audition, they subscribe to you.

What happens next? Unfortunately is that when you put out your next episode that has nothing to do with your first episode. This person isn't going to click. And then that is a problematic behavior that compounds over time because I get it even if that person buys into your theme of, you know, focusing on the first few steps, just being curious, whatever you have. The fact is you will never invite somebody's curiosity about every single specific thing that you're curious about. That is just the nature of this game. Those are just the spots of this leopard. So what ends up happening is your little theme here must be captivating enough or strong enough to make sure that irrespective of the guest irrespective of the idea being discussed, your audience comes back for your theme. And to

be very candid, this isn't even something that I have fully unlocked yet. I am currently workshopping ways in terms of making sure that my theme is extremely crystal clear. It's like very easy to communicate. It takes like three words or something. Haven't gotten there yet, but hopefully soon. But the idea behind doing that is then it makes that buy in just that much more easier for your audience. Again, you could always just discard this altogether and really actually just not be agnostic. For find one thing that you just really want to talk about and just only talk about that thing. Beat the horse to death. So does we that's totally fine. You can do that. That's actually objectively a better approach. The problem with me when it came to doing that was just that my

interests are way too diverse for me to be still doing this two years later and a hundred episodes later with that same zeal. I knew I would have quit way long ago. So the only way that I could continue to do this was by balancing that trade off between doing stuff that I want versus the algorithm game. Figure out what matters more to you last, but not least self promo. I don't know if this is like as big of a revelation as I am hoping it is. But this is something that I struggle with so much I basically have not done any self promo for the podcast. And I feel extremely guilty knowing that had I done that, I know for a fact that I would be in a much, much, much better position than I am currently. So really there isn't that much to say to this and I was maybe I should have

planned to have like a better, more hard hitting truth to serve as the last one. But again, or maybe this is for some of you, I don't know. But my plan is to just actually promote the stuff in a way that is not salesy at all. There's very few things that people dislike more than somebody selling to them. You never want to do that. So instead add value, every episode that you do, there has to be at least one thing that is kind of your favorite that sticks to you. Market that, talk about that.

Don't put your link in the in your post, maybe put it in the comments if needed. But do that, because remember, if you don't do self promo for your own show, why would anyone else ever care about it? It is it's not an option, like it is mandatory for you to do that. That was all I wanted to cover. If you're still here, thank you so much. This truly means a lot. Could you actually please comment that you heard this specific exact part? Maybe the secret word here is amphibian type amphibian, if you if you heard this in the comments. And honestly, that just literally might even make my entire year. I will see you all in a year from now. Hopefully, I'm just kidding. There will be more solo episodes. But that's that's all what else is there to say. Thank you all for watching.

Please subscribe on YouTube Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you so much for being along with me on this journey. I appreciate you all.